New big data survey shows potential for business

For the first time ever, a total 1.8 zettabytes (1.81,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  bytes)of data were generated worldwide last year – and according to forecasts, the volume will continue to double every two years.

Every industry has specific use cases for big data applications. © Fraunhofer IAIS

This raises a key question - how can we utilise these mountains of data better? A survey by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) is reveals new opportunities and challenges for business. To give companies some orientation concerning big data technologies and applications, the researchers have developed an experimentation platform which will be shown at CeBIT fair 2013.

Wouldn't it be helpful if we could just predict business demand or fraud attacks ahead of time? Or justify medical decisions on a more well-founded basis? Or if energy rates could be set on a more customised basis? What if we could make equipment more robust and more intelligent? Lurking somewhere under those mountains of data that accumulate at companies, factories and households every day is the potential that can resolve these questions.

Provided, of course, that you know how to use these data efficiently. In this respect, Germany still has a considerable amount of catching up to do, because the issue of ''big data'' is strongly dominated by the US.

Therefore, over the past several months, the IAIS in Sankt Augustin conducted an extensive survey on the use of and the potential for big data, with financial support from Germany's federal ministry of economics and technology (BMWi).

The results of the survey reveal three major key opportunities for the use of big data:

1. Big data foster more effective business management
   So, for example, in the retail business, more precise demand forecasting can be made. Simialrly in the The energy how much power will be needed can be predicted better. And for simple processes – like inbound mailings – self-learning systems can achieve greater efficiency through automated procedures.
2. Big data facilitate mass customisation
   If systems can learn about customers, then businesses could offer more customised services. ''This could soon give rise to entirely new service concepts – such as, for instance, virtual assistants that organize individualized car-sharing based on historic mobility patterns,'' as Prof. Stefan Wrobel, director of IAIS, affirms.
3. Big data lead to more intelligent products
   Even today, many systems and types of equipment come with sensors that provide information about maintenance conditions. In the future, these machines could also be equipped with big data intelligence, so that they can process sensor data directly; this would enable them to learn, for example, to adjust to peak loads, and even learn when to repair themselves.